Just Because the Sky Has Turned a Pretty Shade of Orange and Red Doesn't Mean You Can Simply Point a Camera and Shoot ... Or Does It?

Golden sunset and red sunrise over Harold Hill 

(SA / Dec 2022) 

 

 

I. 

 

For many serious photographers, these two snaps taken from my bedroom window - a golden sunset and a red sunrise - constitute perfect examples of cliché. 

 

That enormous numbers of people enjoy looking at such pictures doesn't alter the fact that images of dusk and dawn have virtually zero aesthetic value; their mass production and popularity only confirming their banality. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Their very ubiquity is what seems to repel; photography has tainted what it sought to cherish through overuse. It miniaturises natural grandeur and renders it kitsch." [1]

 

If you're a reader of Walter Benjamin, you might explain how mechanical reproduction devalues the aura - by which is meant something like the uniqueness - of an object or event [2]; if you're a fan of D. H. Lawrence, you'll probably start shouting about Kodak vision and how this prevents us from seeing reality, just as cliché inhibits the forming of new perspectives [3].  

 

Now, whilst sympathetic to both of theses authors, I also want to be able to take my snaps and share them with others in good conscience. And so I feel obliged to challenge those who are hostile to photography per se - even if, on philosophical grounds, I share their concerns.

 

And I also feel obliged to challenge those who are dismissive of certain genres of amateur photography - pictures of flowers, or cats, or of the sun's risings and settings - out of cultural snobbery; i.e., those who sneer at aesthetically naive individuals and speak of the wrong kind of people making the wrong kind of images.

           

 

II. 

 

I'm thinking, for example, of the Marxist academic, writer, photographer and curator, Julian Stallabrass, who is interested in the relations between art, politics and popular culture and who sneeringly entitled a chapter of his 1996 work on the widespread popularity of amateur photography 'Sixty Billion Sunsets' [4].

 

As Annebella Pollen notes: 

 

"Stallabrass's denigration of mass photographic practice is based on what he perceives to be its overwhelmingly conventionalised sameness (unlike elite art practices, which are positively polarised as avant-garde, creative and distinctive)." [5]

 

In other words, because Stallabrass sees every sunset photograph as essentially the same, he dismisses them all as "sentimental visual confectionary indicative of limited aesthetic vision and an undeveloped practice" [6]; in other words, stereotypical shit. 

Unfortunately, this attitude is echoed by many other critics and theorists convinced of their own cultural superiority. If you thought postmodernism did away with such snobbery, you'd be mistaken - which is a pity. 

 

For whilst I may agree that just because the sky has turned a pretty shade of orange and red one is nevertheless required to do more than simply point a camera and shoot in order to produce an image that is also a work of art, there's nothing wrong with just taking a snap and plenty of snaps have genuine charm and, yes, even beauty. 

 

In the end, even a bad photograph can seduce and what Barthes calls the punctum - i.e., that which is most poignant (even nuanced) in a picture - is often the failure, fault, cliché, or imperfection. Perhaps, in this digital age of imagery shared via social media, we therefore need to rethink what constitutes a good or bad photograph.    

And, ultimately, Stallabrass is simply wrong: no two sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same and no two photographs of sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same; there is an eternal return of difference (not of the same or to the same). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', eitherand.org - click here. 

 

[2] See Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1935), which can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn, (Bodley Head, 2015).

 

[3] See D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Art and Morality' (1925), which can be found in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 161-68. 

 

[4] Julian Stallabrass, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, (Verso, 1996). 

 

[5] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', op. cit.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

 

On the Question of Quality Versus Quantity

 

   

I. 

 

Good people always insist: It's quality rather than quantity that matters [1].

 

You'll be a much happier and more authentic human being, they say, if you forget about numbers, stop being acquisitive, and focus instead on things that have real value and substance, such as meaningful relationships.

 

It's a kind of moral minimalism in which the related mantra less is more is used to justify a small circle of friends, or the fact that one hasn't read many books. 

 

Surprisingly, even D. H. Lawrence, who is usually quick to attack the base-born stupidity of proverbial wisdom, buys into this idea. But whilst he may be right to argue that it is better to read one good book six times rather than six bad books once [2], we feel obliged to point out the possibility of reading six good books six times.

 

That's a greater quantity of books - and many more readings - but surely that's better than simply reading one text over and over and insisting with monomaniacal intensity on its value. For that's precisely the error religiously-minded people fall into when they mistakenly decide that all they ever need read is a single holy text. 

 

Ultimately, it's not a binary choice: you can have quality and quantity. In fact, as we'll explain below, you can't have the former without the latter ...

  

II. 

 

Speaking as an evolutionary biologist, I can say that nature massively favours quantity over quality, which is why it can be so outrageously profligate. It's not necessarily the fittest who survive in this life, it's those who have the numbers to stake a claim on the future. 

 

And by modelling populations over long timescales, a recent Oxford study showed that the most important determinant of evolutionary success was not good genes, but the widest number of genetically available mutations [3].   

 

Brilliant individuals come and go like flowers; they simply don't have time to fix in the population or determine the evolutionary outcome of a race.   

And speaking as an artist, I can also confirm the fact that the creation of great works rests upon a large body of work. That's why, for example, it was necessary for Picasso to paint some 60,000 pictures in order to produce a small number of works - probably fewer than a 100 - that are considered masterpieces. 

 

This doesn't mean the vast bulk of the work is worthless or a waste of time; on the contrary, it was vital. For it was by producing works in such quantity that Picasso was able to learn, experiment, and evolve as an artist. Most importantly, it allowed him to make mistakes; for just as quality rests upon quantity, success rests upon repeated failure.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The saying is often attributed to the Roman philosopher (and proto-Christian) Seneca; see his Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLV: 'On sophistical argumentation', line 1. Click here to read online.    

 

[2] See Lawrence's discussion of books and reading in relation to this question of quality (or real value) versus quantity in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 60.  

 

[3] The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE and was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It's lead author is Dr Ard Louis, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Oxford University. For an interview with the latter discussing the key finding of the study - i.e., that  life's evolution is all about arrival of the frequent, rather than survival of the fittest - click here.

 

 

Is it Time to Torpedo Torpedo the Ark?

Henry Winkler as Fonzie about to jump the shark in Happy Days (1977)

Alice Krige as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

 

I. 

 

Having spent many years among the ruins writing nothing but fragments in praise of fragmented writing, there was, in the late autumn of 2012, nowhere else to go - and nothing else to do - but enter the blogosphere and embrace the postmodern re-creation of that most charmingly sentimental of forms, le journal.

 

However, as Torpedo the Ark marks its tenth anniversary and rapidly approaches its 2000th post, I find myself wondering whether the blog has, in fact, jumped the shark ...?

 

This perjorative phrase was coined in 1985 with reference to a now notorious episode of the American sitcom Happy Days, in which Fonzie (literally) jumps over a shark whilst on water-skis [1]. 

In a nutshell, it means that a once great TV show (or blog) has passed its best before date - or, if you prefer, gone beyond a joke - and entered the phase when it requires increasingly ridiculous stunts and gimmicks in order to retain its audience (or readership). 

 

This is certainly a concern, although, to be honest, not much of a concern, as I think that one of the most interesting aspects of Torpedo the Ark is that the quality of the posts (like the length and content) can vary wildly and that this variation is not chronologically determined. 

 

Thus, like the Fonz, I'm cool when it comes to jumping the shark. And besides, it doesn't prevent me from growing a beard afterwards [2].  

 

 

II.

 

More of a worry is that the following critic may have a point: 

 

 

Dear Stephen Alexander,

 

You claim that Torpedo the Ark is an attempt to destroy the coordination of life in all its rich diversity and difference. Ironically, however, that's precisely what you are doing on your blog.

      Indeed, I am tempted to think of Torpedo the Ark as a kind of Borg vessel and visualise you as a Borg Queen, overseeing the co-option of otherness and assimilating a wide variety of ideas within a single narrative.

      Unlike Noah, who built his Ark to God's design in order to preserve and protect all forms of life, you have constructed a diabolically clever blog which forcibly transforms very singular writers and thinkers into drones ready to do your bidding, or dummies who give voice to your own nihilistic philosophy based not so much on the futility of resistance as the abandonment of all hope and curbing of any enthusiasm.

    

 

This is a provocative email in which the writer nicely summarises the blog's (nihilistic) philosophy. And if I thought it were true, I'd certainly be concerned.     

 

However, whilst I may have a profound loathing for species 5618, I don't quite see myself as a Borg Queen in the manner my correspondent conceives. For just as she is more an avatar of the Collective than a ruler over it, I am merely an effect and function of the blog, rather than a sovereign intelligence controlling everything behind the scenes. 

 

In other words, I am neither the origin nor the limitation of Torpedo the Ark and so it's really not up to me to determine when or how it comes to an end. Happily, I can leave that to fate ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Happy Days episode in question was the third episode of season five, entitled 'Hollywood: Part 3' (dir. Jerry Paris), which aired on 20 September, 1977. Click here to watch a five minute clip on YouTube. 

      It's important to note that Happy Days remained a hugely successful show long after this episode and the series ran for another six seasons. 

 

[2] Growing the beard is the opposite of jumping the shark; the definitive moment when a show or an artist finally finds their feet (or their voice) and their popularity or critical standing suddenly takes off.

      The phrase derives from the fact that the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is considered superior to the first season and that, coincidentally, the character William Riker (played by Jonathan Frakes) had chosen to abandon his clean-shaven look.   

 

 

La beauté est une promesse de bonheur: On the Joy of Discovering Stendhal

Portrait rouge et noir de Stendhal by SA (2022)

based on the original work by Louis Ducis (1835) 

 

"Ne me demandez pas qui je suis et ne me dites pas de rester le même ..." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Stendhal is one of those 19th-century French writers that I've never got around to reading. 

 

And that's despite the fact that Nietzsche thought highly of him, describing Stendhal in Beyond Good and Evil as the last great psychologist [2] and confessing in Ecce Homo that he envied Stendhal for providing the finest and funniest atheist joke: God's only excuse is that he does not exist [3].

And it's also despite the fact that, astrologically speaking, Stendhal belongs to the House that I privilege above all others (i.e., the 11th). Being an Aquarian doesn't necessarily make you an interesting writer, but it does mean that Stendhal can be placed alongside the likes of Byron, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Burroughs, to name but a few.   

 

However, the fact remains I've never been tempted to read Stendhal - until now; and that's entirely thanks to a fascinating article written by Naveed Rehan, an independent scholar based in Lahore, Pakistan ... [4]

 

 

II. 

 

Rehan's description of Stendhal as a man full of contradictions who is believed to have used over a 100 different pseudonyms and worn many masks in his lifetime, could almost have been written with the aim of catching my attention and sending me to the Amazon website so as to immediately order a copy of Souvenirs d’Égotisme, a short unfinished text which, Rehan informs us, recounts his time in Paris between 1821 and 1830 and which was written in just thirteen days during the summer of 1832. 

 

According to Rehan, this memoir would now be classified as a work of creative nonfiction - "a relatively new name [...] for an old way of writing, often referred to as belles-lettres" [5]. The key to this style of writing - whatever we choose to call it - is artfulness. 

 

It's a clever, ironic, sophisticated genre produced by writers who aren't afraid to slant the truth and who understand the importance of shaping experience and giving natural feeling artificial form. As Rehan notes: "It is not enough just to be sincere in writing true life stories; one must also craft them so that they can have the desired effect upon the reader."  

 

Having said that, Stendhal declares his intention "to be absolutely truthful and sincere in his Memoirs", which is a concern and more than a little problematic. But then we remember D. H. Lawrence's injunction to trust the text, not the author and we discover that Stendhal's perfect sincerity is just another pose and that, as Rehan points out, Souvenirs d’Égotisme is as artful as even a Wildean reader would wish for.   

 

The fact is, we never discover the real writer behind the mask; although arguably his identity is not so much hidden as dispersed and multiplied, until we are no longer sure who he is. Attempts to piece together an authentic and unified self from his fragmentary writings - to discover Stendhal's true identity - are ultimately doomed to failure; this master of illusion and disguise will never be found out or pinned down.     

 

And that's a good thing. Why? Because, as Rehan suggests, it enables Stendhal to preserve freshness of heart, by which I think she refers to the innocence of becoming; which is always of course a becoming-other and by no means merely an imaginative exercise, even if it can often be something that takes place within great works of literature, as Deleuze and Guattari demonstrated. 

 

I'm grateful to Naveed for presenting Stendhal in such a charming light; one which counters the orthodox Lawrentian view that he was, as a matter of fact, a nasty piece of work [6].      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This line from Michel Foucault could easily have been penned by Stendhal; both men wrote in order to have no face. The line can be found in L’archéologie du savoir (1969) and is usually translated into English as: 'Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same ...'

 

[2] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, II. 39. 

 

[3] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 'Why I Am So Clever', §3.

 

[4] Naveed Rehan, '"I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes": Rereading Stendhal's Souvenirs d’Égotisme', The Friday Times, (12 December, 2022): click here. All quotes in the post above are from this piece by Rehan. 

 

[5] Rehan is not the first or only critic to suggest that creative nonfiction is just a rather more austere sounding term for belles-lettres. 

      In an article entitled 'Non-fiction is dead: Long Live Belles-lettres', Arpita Das, for example, argues that writing which although based on reportage of real events, people and places is nevertheless a skilful literary construction, is best described "by that charming phrase coined in the days of Voltaire, 'belles-lettres', meaning simply 'fine writing'". 

      The article can be found in Open magazine (2 Dec 2011), or read online by clicking here.  

 

[6] See Lawrence's letter to E. M. Forster (6 Nov 1916) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 21. 

      For those readers who don't have this book to hand, Lawrence writes: 

 

"I believe in bonheur, when people feel bon. But to pretend bonheur when you only feel malice and spite [...] no thank you. [...] I feel a bit shy even of Stendhal's bonheur. I look for it in vain in Rouge et la Noir, and L'Amour, and Chartreuse. A man may believe in that which he in himself is not. But I don't give much for such a belief. [...] Let a man go to the bottom of what he is, and believe in that. And Stendhal was not bon: he was méchant to a high degree. So he should have believed in his own wickedness, not kept a ticket to heaven up his sleeve, called bonheur."  

      Lawrence's essentialism and sincerity - on full display here - would of course make it difficult for him to ever really like (or trust) Stendhal, or those who, like Stendhal, affirmed the truth of masks and stamped becoming with the character of being. 

Reflections on Heide Hatry's Rusty Dog

Heide Hatry: Rusty Balloon Dog (2015) 

Photo by Stan Schnier

 

 

I. 

 

Ask a metallurgist and they'll tell you that rust is an iron oxide, usually reddish-brown in colour, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water. Which, of course, is true in as much as it's factually correct. 

 

But, when considered from a philosophical perspective, rust is a fascinating erotico-aesthetic phenomenon, which is why it has long appealed to artists; particulary those who see beauty in decay and believe in the ruins. 

 

II. 

 

Victorian writer and art critic, John Ruskin, for example, was a big fan of rust. Whilst conceding that you can't use a rusty knife or razor with the same effectiveness as a rust-free blade, rust, he says, is not a defect, but a sign of metallic virtue [1].

 

What's more, in a certain sense, "we may say that iron rusted is Living; but when pure or polished, Dead". Rusting, in other words, is a sign of inorganic respiration; the taking in of oxygen from the atmosphere by the iron.  

 

Further, it's iron in this oxidised, vital form which makes the Earth not only habitable for living organisms, but beautiful; for rust makes the world softer to the touch and more colourful to the eye - just think, he says, of all those "beautiful violet veinings and variegations" of marble. 

 

 

III.

I recalled Ruskin's lecture in praise of rust when seeing one of Heide Hatry's figures in the Rusty Dog series and whilst reading her thoughts [2] on what these figures represent. 

 

According to Hatry, the rusty dogs pose a challenge to the super-shiny, super-smooth aesthetic of Jeff Koons, exemplified by his mirror-polished stainless steel Balloon Dog (1994); and secondly, they call into question the commodification of art, exemplified by the sale of the latter in 2013 for a then record sum for a work by a living artist of $58.4 million.

 

Unlike Koons's balloon dogs - he produced five in all, each with a different transparent colour coating - Hatry's rusty dogs are small in size and made out of cheap 'n' cheerful material. I'm almost tempted to refer to them (affectionately) as mutts.

 

They remind one rather of the famous animal assemblages made by Picasso in the early 1950s, which incorporated found materials, magically transforming them into works of art. His she-goat, crane, and baboon were playful, certainly, but not just intended to be fun - a key term for Koons.       

 

Ultimately, however, for all his talk of fun and innocence, Hatry thinks Koons is cynical and that his works lack soul - by which she seems to mean depth, seriousness, and maturity, but which I would interpret (following Ruskin) as meaning they don't breathe; don't oxidise; don't rust. 

 

For it's rust which is the anti-Koonsian material - and rusting the anti-Koonsian process - par excellence. 

 

Rust challenges all forms of idealism, including the Koonsian dream of a super-smooth, super-shiny surface that perfectly reflects the viewer in all their narcissism and projects the promise of an everlasting, never changing world, free from corruption and death.       

Notes

 

[1] See John Ruskin, 'The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy', Lecture V in The Two Paths (1859). Click here for the 2005 eBook published online by Project Gutenberg from which I'm quoting. 

 

[2] These thoughts were expressed to me in an email dated 8 Dec 2022 and contained in an unpublished essay - 'Must We Abhor a Vacuum?' - written in collaboration with John Wronoski, in 2014.

      Although I am more favourably disposed to Jeff Koons and his work than Heide, I do have issues with his aesthetic of smoothness and, push comes to shove, I side with those who affirm dirt, dust, rust, and shit (what Bataille calls base matter) over the smooth, the shiny, the seamless, etc. 

 

 

 Readers who are interested, can click here to access the posts on (or with reference to) Jeff Koons on Torpedo the Ark.  

 

 

Maiesiophilia

A pregnant Demi Moore photographed by 

Annie Liebovitz for Vanity Fair (1991) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

One of the most famous - and, at the time, most scandalous - scenes in D. H. Lawrence's 1915 novel The Rainbow, features newly wed Anna Brangwen dancing naked before the Unknown, whilst heavily pregnant:

 

"Big with child as she was, she danced there in the bedroom by herself, lifting her hands and her body to the Unseen Creator [...] to whom she belonged.

      She would not have had anyone know. She danced in secret, and her soul rose in bliss. She danced in secret before the Creator, she took off her clothes and danced in the pride of her bigness." [2]      

 

One Saturday afternoon, alone in her bedroom before the fire, she again "took off her things and danced, lifting her knees and her hands in a slow, rhythmic exulting" [3]. When her husband Will enters and finds her naked in the shadows, he is somewhat startled, and advises that, if she's not careful, she'll catch a cold. 

 

Irritated by this stupid, sexless remark, Anna lifted her hands and began to dance once more, the firelight illuminating her body:

 

"He stood away near the door in blackness of shadow, watching transfixed. And with slow, heavy movements, she swayed backwards and forwards [...] pale in the dusky afternoon [...]

      He watched, and his soul burned in him. He turned aside, he could not look [...] Her fine limbs lifted and lifted, her hair was sticking out all fierce, and her belly, big, strange, terrifying [...] Her face was rapt and beautiful [...] [4]    

 

Will is unable to ever forget this vision of his pregnant young wife; if it aroused him at all, so too did it terrify him; for at that moment she was, in all her femaleness, beyond him. 

 

This is certainly an interesting scene to do with womanhood, sex and pregnancy - albeit one that Lawrence cannot help dressing up in religious language (just as, on the other hand, this self-professed priest of love cannot help eroticising his own metaphysics). 

 

One assumes that Lawrence's publishers (Methuen & Co.) must have known that this scene - along with several others - would cause them problems with the censors ...? 

 

And, sure enough, The Rainbow was prosecuted for obscenity, as a result of which around a thousand copies of the novel were seized and burnt and the book remained unavailable in Britain for the next eleven years (although editions were published in the United States). 

 

As one critic wrote in high moral outrage, when art refuses to 'conform to the ordered laws that govern human society [...] it must pay the penalty' [5].

 

 

II.   

 

In a letter written to Martin Secker in 1920, Lawrence reflects on the fate of The Rainbow, suggesting that the magistrates had acted in response to the hostile reviews the book received. He also informs Secker: "The scene to which exception was particularly taken was the one where Anna dances naked, when she is with child." [6] 

 

Thus, Lawrence was certainly aware that this scene was probematic - and I'm sure he knew why. For whilst Christianity has never taught that coition during pregnancy is a sin, many Church Fathers - including St. Augustine and Clement of Alexandria - seem, like Anna's husband Will, to be freaked out by the erotic aspects of pregnancy and the idea of fucking an expectant mother. 

 

The former, for example, spoke harshly about those husbands who approach their wives for sexual intercourse whilst they are with child, seeing this as a shameful lack of self-control [7]. As for the latter, he was more concerned about potential harms that might result, believing that it was necessary to protect the uterus once it had received the semen it desires and began the process of child formation. 

 

According to Clement, the womb closes itself up during pregnancy and no longer craves semen. Thus, any further act of coition at the man's insistence - and any new delivery of semen - is an excessive act of violence [8]. 

 

Beliefs such as these have continued to shape the thinking of many people, even whilst modern medical professionals insist that sex during pregnancy is normal, healthy, and perfectly safe for all parties concerned; including the unborn child, which is protected by the amniotic fluid in the womb and by the cervical mucus plug that forms shortly after conception.         

 

 

III. 

 

In conclusion ...

 

Whilst some women may experience a decrease in their sex drive whilst pregnant, others - like Anna Brangwen - never feel more sexually attractive and empowered than when big with child. 

 

Similary, whilst some men - like Will Brangwen - have a tokophobic aversion to seeing their pregnant wives dance round naked and ecstatically delighting in their womanhood and fertility, others veer towards maiesiophilia and are turned on by lactating breasts and an enlarged abdomen [9].      

 

Personally, I'm with Will on this one. It's not that I feel humiliated or nullified in my maleness by the site of a pregnant nude woman. Rather, I just find it slightly irritating when women like Anna (or Demi) get too full of themseves and believe that pregnancy - a biological function shared with all other mammals - is a miraculous state that gives them meaning or brings them closer to God. 

I would remind such women of this crucial couple of lines from Lawrence:

 

"That she bear children is not a woman's significance. But that she bear herself, that is her supreme and risky fate: that she drive on to the edge of the unknown, and beyond." [10]

 

      

Notes

 

[1] This nude photograph by Annie Liebovitz of 28-year old actress Demi Moore, who was seven months pregnant at the time, certainly got people talking when it appeared on the cover of the August 1991 issue of Vanity Fair. 

      Many critics deemed it inappropriate; some even described it as indecent (despite the fact that Moore discreetly covers her breasts with her hand). Some retail outlets would only sell the issue once it was wrapped in plain paper, as if a pornographic magazine, much to Moore's bemusement. It has since been named as one of the most influential images of the 20th-century, although, interestingly, Liebovitz herself doesn't think it a particularly good picture.    

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 169-170. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 170.    

[4] Ibid., pp. 170-171.

[5] James Douglas, writing in the Star (22 October, 1915), quoted by Mark Kinkead-Weekes in his Introduction to The Rainbow, p. xlvi.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Martin Secker (16 January 1920), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 458-460. The line quoted is on p. 459.

 

[7] See Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, V.   

 

[8] See Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, II. X.

 

[9] Pregnancy porn may still be a rather niche interest, but internet searches for such have steadily increased during the last few years according to stats released by Pornhub, in 2017. Not all of this traffic comes from out-and-out pregnancy fetishisists, however; it also includes, for example, those men who simply like to fantasise about their own virility and gain arousal or gratification from the possibility (or risk) of impregnating a woman. 

      Somewhat surprisingly, Pornhub's data also reveals that women are significantly more interested in pregnancy-related porn than men; indeed, women in the 25-34 year old age group are the most likely to search online for such. See Lenyon Whitaker, 'Pornhub data reveals "pregnancy porn" searches are on the rise', Metro (15 May, 2017): click here.   

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, 'Study of Thomas Hardy', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 52. 

      In this same passage, Lawrence explicity denies that the purpose of sex is for the depositing of seed. Procreation, he says, is "merely a preservative measure" and the continuance of life in the flesh "only a minor function". 

 

 

On Self-Isolation (Entry from the Dementia Diary)

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash 

unsplash.com

 

 

After 2,440 days in exile and isolation - of which the last 520 days have effectively been spent in solitary confinement (only a demented old woman and a cat for company) - I can vouch for the fact that:  

 

"The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit." 

 

- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, trans. Kenneth Burke, (The Dial, 1924).

Hyaena

A spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)

aka the laughing hyaena

 

"I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger. 

I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

There are, as a matter of fact, four distinct species of hyaena. But I suspect that when most peope think of them - if and when they think of them at all - they think of the spotted laughing hyaena.

 

I also suspect that most people think of them with a shudder and a curl of the lip, finding them an uncanny mix of the creepy and contemptible; cowardly pack hunters that torment their prey, or scavengers skulking round graveyards and feasting on the bodies of the dead. 

 

 

II. 

 

D. H. Lawrence certainy wasn't a fan. He regarded the hyaena - like the vulture and baboon - as an example of arrested development; an evil creature that obscenely preserves a "fixed form about a voracious seethe of corruption" [2] and which knows no shame.   

 

The howl of the wolf may unsettle him, but it is the laugh of the hyaena that fills Lawrence with fear and horror - that and the "loathsome, cringing, imprisoned loins" [3] that are amost dragged along in the dust and dirt. 

 

The hyaena, says Lawrence, "can scarcely see and hear the living world; it draws back to the stony fixity of its own loins, draws back upon its own nullity, sightless save for carrion" [4].

 

It's surprising, when one considers his animosity against the poor hyaena, that Lawrence didn't refer back to that ancient belief they were hermaphrodites; i.e., intersexual creatures alternating with fluidity between male and female roles. [5].   

 

For as we know, Lawence was a passionate proponent not only of sexual difference, but sexual dualism: 

 

"Sex surely has a specific meaning. Sex means being divided into male and female. [...] Every single living cell is either male or female, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts. [...] The talk about a third sex, or about the indeterminate sex, is just to pervert the issue." [6]

 

The truth of this is essential for Lawrence, as it is for early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria ...

 

 

III.

 

Despite being a Christian theologian and recognised as a Church Father, Clement of Alexandria was heavily infuenced by Greek philosophy and literature, particularly Plato and the Stoics. Fragments of his more obscure writings suggest he was also deeply familiar with Jewish esotericism.   

 

Although we don't know for certain when he was born or when he died, we do know that the moral lessons that Clement takes from the animal kingdom are invariaby negative; the hyaena, for example, teaches man what mustn't be done. 

 

Not that he takes seriously the legend concerning its hermaphroditism; rejecting it on the grounds that once the logic of nature - or, if you prefer, the stamp of creative reason - has determined what an animal is, it cannot be changed [7]. Thus, the hyaena, cannot switch sexes; nor does it possess two sexes, or a third intermediary sex between male and female.

 

However, Clement is obliged to address the fact that the genitalia of the female hyaena closely resembles that of the male; the enlarged clitoris is not only shaped and positioned like a penis, but is capable of erection. The female also possesses no external vaginal opening, as the labia are fused to form a pseudo-scrotum. Traversing the length of the pseudo-penis is a central canal, through which the female urinates, copulates, and gives birth. [8] 

Interestingly, although Clement describes the female hyaena's peculiar anatomy in exactly the same manner as Aristotle, he comes to his own conclusion: it must be due to the animal's moral shortcomings. In other words, hyaenas have a body that's arranged in such a queer fashion, because of a defective nature and the fact that, like men, they are prone to lasciviousness ... [9]

 

 

IV.

 

Despite the fact that, as a Lawrentian, I'm supposed to despise them, I'm starting to feel a certain admiration for the hyaena, which have limped on the face of the earth for millions of years. 

 

And this is not just because they challenge certain ideas about sexual dimorphism, but because they also curdle the line of distinction between cat and dog. For athough phylogenetically closer to felines, hyaenas are behaviourally and morphologically similar to canids; they hunt like dogs, for example, but they groom, scent mark, and defecate like cats ... 

 

Perhaps they only laugh because they don't know whether to bark or purr ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Edwin Morgan, 'Hyena', in Glasgow to Saturn, (Carcanet, 1973). The verse can also be found in Morgan's Collected Poems, (Carcanet Press, 1990). To read on the Scottish Poetry Library website, click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 295.  

[3] Ibid., p. 299.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ovid gives reference to this in Metamorphoses; see 15: 408. 

      Although Aristotle rejected this belief and few naturalists following him gave the idea any credence, still the queerness of the hyaena was taken as a given and its reputation amongst those who, like Lawrence, read everything (including animal behaviour and anatomy) in moral terms, was irretrievably damaged.      

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 66 and 126. 

 

[7] Christian ontology - building on its Platonic origins - insists upon the fixed nature of being; there is no transformation of essential forms; one species cannot become another and nor can one sex transition into the other.    

 

[8] In fact, the hyaena is the only placental mammal where females lack an external vaginal opening and have a pseudo-penis instead. This isn't something that seems advantageous; not only does it make mating difficult, but giving birth isn't a barrel of laughs either, often proving fatal for mother and cub (approximately 15% of females die during their first time giving birth and over 60% of firstborn cubs are dead on arrival).

 

[9] See Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 2021), pp. 19-21. 

     

    

From Too Many Notes to Silence

Figure 1: Joseph II / Figure 2: Mozart / Figure 3: John Cage 

                           

 

I.

 

Following the premier of Entführung aus dem Serail [1] in the summer of 1782, at the Burgtheater (Vienna), Mozart famously had an exchange with the man who had commissioned the work, Emperor Joseph II. 

 

Whilst the latter lavishy praised the three-act comic opera, he suggested that there were times when the music became too convoluted and contained, as it were, too many notes ... [2]

To be fair to Joseph - who was by no means musically illiterate or some kind of Bildungsphilister - the complexity of Mozart's work had been noted by others - including Goethe - and what he actually said was: Zu schön für unsere Ohren, und gewaltig viel Noten, lieber Mozart!

This might more accurately be translated into English as: 'Too beautiful for our ears, and a great many notes, dear Mozart!' 

 

Such a translation doesn't unfairly portray the Emperor in a foolish light - although it does, of course, rob the story of its humorous aspect.     

II.

I thought of this the other day when trying to read what was, in my view, a long and overly wordy poem, written by someone (about a pet parrot of all things) who has argued in the past in favour of pleonasm (i.e., an excess of language). 

 

Rightly or wrongly, however, like the Holy Roman Emperor of anecdote and cinematic fiction, I do think that a poem can have too many words and that often it's what is not said that matters most; i.e., the space between words is the true space of poetry. 

 

Thus, for me, the task of the poet is not to assemble words, but to take language apart and show its limitations; to erase meaning and return us to lovely silence, the great bride of all creation [3]. 

 

Perhaps the perfect poem is ultimately the one that remains unspoken, unwritten; just as the perfect piece of music is the one with no notes, performed by no instruments, à la John Cage's 4'33" [4].      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Known in Engish as The Abduction from the Seraglio, the work is a German-language music drama, known as a Singspiel. 

 

[2] This exchange between composer and monarch was nicely dramatised in the 1984 film Amadeus (dir. Miloš Forman), with Tom Hulce as Mozart and Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II: click here.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Silence', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 612.

 

[4] 4′33″ is a three-movement work by American experimental composer John Cage. It was written in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs performers to remain silent during the entire duration of the piece. One wonders what Emperor Joseph II would make of this ...? (Not enough notes, Mr. Cage!) My concern is that the composition only gives us a negative representation of silence; silence as a lack or absence of sound.

      To watch the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Foster, give their interpretation of the work at the Barbican, London, in 2013, click here.

Reflections on Alessandro Raho's New Portrait of Young Kim

Alessandro Raho: Young Kim (2022)

Oil on canavas (110 x 180 cm)

 alisonjacques.com

 

 

I.

 

Viewing Alessandro Raho's latest portrait of Young Kim at a recent event in London [1] and listening to what was said in a three-way conversation between the artist, the sitter, and the critic Michael Bracewell about the complex relationship between art, fashion, music and sex, one couldn't help but think of D. H. Lawrence's dismissive assessment of English painters; not so much devoid of genuine feeling for visual imagery, as full of fear of the body as a site of various forces, flows, and sicknesses. 

 

It is this fear, says Lawrence, which distorts their vision and suppresses their instinctive-intuitive consciousness.

 

Still, every cloud has a silver lining and this act of suppression did at least enable English artists of the 18th-century to become the best in the world at painting clothes. For painters such as Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, it is clear that the coat matters more than the man. 

 

Lawrence writes:

"An old Reynolds colonel in a red uniform is much more a uniform than an individual, and as for Gainsborough, all one can say is: What a lovey dress and hat! What really expensive Italian silk! This painting of garments continued in vogue, till pictures like Sargent's seem to be nothing but yards and yards of satin from the most expensive shops, having some pretty head popped on at the top. The imagination is quite dead. The optical vision, a sort of flashy coloured photography of the eye, is rampant.

      In Titian, in Velasquez, in Rembrandt the people are there inside their clothes all right, and the clothes are imbued with the life of the individual, the gleam of the warm procreative body comes through all the time [...] But modern people are nothing inside their garments, and a head sticks out at the top and hands stick out of the sleeves, and it is a bore." [2]

 

 

II.

 

Alessandro Raho appears to follow in this tradition, as the above portrait of Young Kim illustrates. It is a beautiful rendition of a multicoloured mohair jumper by Kim Jones for the Louis Vuitton S/S 2017 menswear collection, but the woman inside the jumper seems to have simply faded away into the blank void of the background; just a head and neck sticking out of the top of the punk-style sweater and two tiny hands sticking out of the sleeves.     

 

But, having said that - and having seen the work up close and spoken with the artist - I can't help being impressed by it and by him. 

 

First of all, he didn't seem to me to be gripped with fear at all; nor simply following in the footsteps of those famous names who came before him and whom Lawrence dismissed. In fact, Raho seems to gently mock the laughably old-fashioned tradition of portraiture by refusing to dramatise or idealise the figures he paints [3] and by having them return our gaze with interest (so that we are objectified in the process of viewing). 

As for Lawrence's concerns about Kodak vision, well, it is true that Raho does work from photographs, but, interestingly, he employs his skill as a painter to somehow capture something that the camera lens cannot; something that might be termed (for want of another word) presence. 

 

Raho is not simply aiming for realism in his portraits, so much as longing nostalgically for the same thing Lawrence desired; i.e., to come into touch, even when he knows this is no longer an easy matter when we have all become digital images to one another within a virtual universe. 

 

Perhaps having intuitively reached a similar conclusion to Lawrence about portrait painting, Raho has decided to push the process that the latter describes to its limit. The picture of Young Kim is thus deceptively straightforward and innocuous; for it is, as Nietzsche would say, superficial out of profundity [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The event took place on Monday 28th November (7-11pm) at the bookstore-cum-library-cum arts venue Reference.Point (London, WC2). It was held to celebrate the launch of the trade edition of Young Kim's unique little red book A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell (2020). 

      A reading from the work was followed by a discussion with Michae Bracewell and Alessandro Raho in the presence of the latter's latest painting of Young Kim. There was also an informal screening of Malcolm McLaren's video project Shallow 1-21 (2009), although, sadly, no one seemed to pay much attention to this.   

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 193-94.

 

[3] This desire to make art which is both contemporary and commonplace is of course crucial to a realist aesthetic and, however else we might describe Raho's work, we can almost certainly say it's a form of realism - though what kind of realism is debatable.

 

[4] See section 4 of Nietzsche's 1886 Preface to The Gay Science, where he writes that in order to live in a Greek manner we must remain courageously at the surface of the skin, the fold of the dress; i.e., learn to adore appearance and trust in forms. 

      Cf. my interpretation of Raho's work with that of Michael Bracewell, who argues that the portraits are concerned with "emotional and psychological depth". See Bracewell's essay in The Art of Alessandro Raho (Lund Humphries, 2011).